During the break I got a snap of a couple of the beginner students. Both Slovak, so locals. Though unlikely local to Modra. Hope they keep up their Esperanto.

In the afternoon there was an excursion, which I hadn't signed up for of course. Instead, one of the late arrivals to the event, a charming French beginner Esperantist, had liked my idea of a trip to nearby (21 kms away) Trnava for the afternoon. Well, I say beginner, but the reality is that in two weeks, I don't know how, but she had managed to learn Esperanto. It really goes to prove how close Esperanto is to the Romance languages.

Anyway, I'd found out when the bus left from nearby Kral'ova and off we set. Rather ambitiously we'd agreed to walk some of the way from Kral'ova to Trnava. As the next town on the way was actually 7 kms away that meant at least a 7 km walk and then maybe a bus or hitch-hiking the rest of the way.

Well, we didn't get very far before Solenne decided that she wasn't going to be able to stand the heat so we headed back to the bus-stop... or should I say a bustop. I knew exactly which bus-stop to wait at as my bloke at the hotel had explained it to me very clearly... albeit in Slovakian. (Sorry, I had to throw in the reference to the fact that I seem to be able to understand simple Slovak too...) Anyway, if I'd thought about where the bus stop was that I knew about, and where the bus stop was that we were waiting at, it was obvious that we were at the wrong one. And as we knew exactly what time the bus was supposed to come, it was pretty easy to work out that the bus-stop that just went past on the other street was ours. So, so much for our trip to Trnva.

Well, actually, we tried hitch-hiking and it's hard to believe that Solenne would have had much trouble getting a lift... but she did have me standing next to her which probably (no doubt) didn't help. Or maybe Slovaks just aren't into giving people lifts.

I walked back to the congress-centre with Solenne and then I decided that as I didn't have anything else to do other than sit in the restaurant and sink a few more beers, I might as well walk to Budmerice, the next town, by myself.

It turned out to be a pretty boring walk with lots of fields and sunflowers by the road and annoyingly enough, a ditch by the side of the road so when trucks came past on the rather narrow road it was really awkward to get clear of the roadway.

As for Budmerice, the first place I headed for was the pub. I had a beer and there was the consolation of the olympics on tv... but this being central Europe where they are really into stuff like fencing... all I had to watch was some boring hand-ball game.

I finally ventured out into the sun again to see some people waiting at the bus-stop on the other side of the road... the road back to Modra, so I jumped at the chance to take the bus rather than walk back. Unfortunately this meant that I didn't get to wander around the village, though I'm not convinced there was really anything to see there anyway. At most it would have been another country church.